<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>dark rapture by Magepaw</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29664945">dark rapture</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magepaw/pseuds/Magepaw'>Magepaw</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>lucilius is the worst [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Historical, Belial Being Belial (Granblue Fantasy), Dissociation, Disturbing Themes, Gift Fic, M/M, Mortality, Plague, Plague Doctor Lucilius, Religious Imagery &amp; Symbolism, Trans Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 23:08:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,797</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29664945</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magepaw/pseuds/Magepaw</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Billowing robes sweep behind him like storm clouds as he stalks the cobbled streets. When Lucilius enters the town, he is the harbinger of its end.  </p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Belial/Lucilius (Granblue Fantasy)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>lucilius is the worst [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1880200</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>dark rapture</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/GStK/gifts">GStK</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>written for the prompt: <i>Faa is a plague doctor but actually he's the plague bringer and Belial is the avatar of pestilence and lets just say 1400s Italy is about to have a bad time</i> </p><p>I am, as always, very fond of arsonist faa who knows no gender but destruction (◕ᴗ◕✿) not historically accurate since bahamut is god, you know how it is </p><p><b>also be aware:</b> there is some derealization stuff and trans stuff, this is faa we're talking about </p><p>for grey, who wanted a romance ♥</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>Be dyed in black, and quickly rot in obscurity.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Billowing robes sweep behind him like storm clouds as he stalks the cobbled streets. When Lucilius enters the town, he is the harbinger of its end.  </p><p>The normally lively marketplace lays barren before him at high noon. The oppressive silence settles like a shroud. The butchers and bakers have boarded their doors. The farm stands are rotting with abandoned produce, agitated flies buzzing in a cloud as he prods at a leaking basket with his cane. Several lean dogs with hungry eyes size him up from the shadows of an alley, but decide warily not to approach him.</p><p>Lucilius turns on his heel and squints through the thick lenses embedded in his mask. The glass is tinted red to shade him from direct sunlight, and perhaps to mask the uncanny blue of his eyes from those who might recognize him. He spies the belfry near the city hall, a modest construct in a town of this size, and makes his way toward holy ground.</p><p>There is a sharp clatter behind him. Out of nowhere Lucilius hears galloping hoof beats drawing nearer, but makes no effort to step aside. There are no carriages here, no city watchmen on horseback patrolling the plaza. He curls his lip and waits with brittle patience ready to snap.</p><p>Sure enough, the sound vanishes from whence it came. Silence returns.</p><p>He reaches the belfry, and circles the fenced perimeter to find the entrance. The bell hangs ominously mute in its steeple. Perhaps this town is in need of a new bell-ringer. Lucilius pushes down a half-surfaced memory of bells tolling throughout the night, a morbid reminder that kept him awake when he was small enough to still know fear. He might know someone who would delight in the disruptive clamor of making noise at all hours to announce his presence.</p><p>He touches the gate, and the clattering of hooves ring in his ears again. The feral dogs begin to bark and howl in terror, scattering with their tails tucked low.</p><p>Tremble before oblivion.</p><p>Lucilius winces at the lancing pain that sears through his skull like a hot poker. He leans heavy against his cane, constitution fading in the heat, and waits for the spell to pass.</p><p>The air shimmers, blurry around him, and for a brief moment, he can see the horsemen going by. The otherworldly figures are always indistinct to his mortal eyes, watering both from the intensity of their presence and the pressure of his migraine, but he recognizes their features all the same. The blood red stallion, whose proud and vain rider boasts hair of spun gold and wings of steel blades; the sleek black destrier mounted by a black shadow, horned and many-winged and faceless; the ashen nag with its equally gaunt rider, hollow eyes and ragged wings and scythe clutched in their white-knuckled grip.</p><p>Lucilius has never witnessed the fourth horse, but he knows where to look for the rider. He blinks rapidly to clear the water from his eyes, and then the streets are deserted once more.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“I thought I might find you skulking about here,” Lucilius announces tonelessly as he peels the leather mask from his sweaty face. Summer is disgusting. He wants to throw himself into the sea, if only to feel the cold bite of water on his skin before it devours him. “Don't you have work you could be doing?”</p><p>The interior of the small chapel is humble enough, ceilings vaulting high like the upturned belly of a ship, but nothing on the scale of the grand stone cathedrals of Rome with their mosaics and soaring towers. Lucilius strides down the center aisle and tosses his mask at Belial, who effortlessly catches it.</p><p>Belial is lounging in the pews most irreverently, long legs kicked up atop an ornate carving at the border of the wooden bench. The pews in the back are far plainer than the pews at the front, which are inscribed with the names of the families who bought them to remain front and center at every mass. Belial is making good use of the extra leg room he is afforded.</p><p>“This mask reeks like a whorehouse,” Belial remarks, no doubt intending that to be a compliment. He seems incapable of keeping his crude observations to himself. He thrusts his nose in anyway, eager to consume the same stale air Lucilius has exhaled. “How much perfume is packed in there?”</p><p>“Perfume is expensive. Local flowers, herbs, soaked in vinegar if I have the time to distill it.” Lucilius is already forcing his entry into the sanctuary. The screen is stubborn, but he levers it aside with a thrust of his cane and an annoyed grunt.</p><p>“There's something romantic about stuffing your pockets full of posies to evade the inevitability of death, don't you think?” Belial's voice is muffled through the filter, but he sounds amused nonetheless.</p><p>“Others rub themselves in fecal matter. The point is that the smell is strong, not pleasant.”</p><p>“Olfactophilia, huh? Mortals have such fascinating kinks,” Belial prompts, feigning ignorance.</p><p>He knows what Lucilius means, of course, but he indulges in the tired topic like the simpering fool he is, baiting Lucilius into lecture. It's been too long since they last talked face to face, and he is starved for attention.</p><p>“Don't be vulgar. As I've explained before, it is not some deviant paraphilia, it is the miasma theory of medicine,” Lucilius says matter-of-factly, taking the bait anyway. “Rotting organic matter creates harmful air, a noxious and unwholesome effluvia, which breeds an epidemic in the close living quarters of an overcrowded city. Replacing the bad air with another scent is one way to fumigate. Air from the countryside would also be a cure.”</p><p>“You say theory like you don't fully believe it, <em>doctor</em>,” Belial points out, smile playing on his lips. The mask is in his busy hands now, always looking for something to manipulate. Troublesome.</p><p>“Blood letting is still a perfectly acceptable treatment. Well, that or copious amounts of prayer and penance,” Lucilius curls his lip, gesturing at the altar. He is standing where the priest would deliver his sermon, and Belial is his sole devotee, drinking in every word. The irony is not lost on him. “If this plague is God's divine punishment for our earthly sins, then surely self-flagellation will earn His forgiveness and end the suffering of mankind.”</p><p>But he was not hired by the church, to spread their sanctimonious word and repent; he is on the city council's coin. Terribly inefficient things, councils. They had scarcely asked his credentials beyond his name, and the name he gave them could not be traced further than a town or two away, should they go asking around. Once he was hired, the wealthy fled entirely in a desperate bid to outpace him, abandoning their people in favor of the solitude of summer villas on the southern coastline. They were fools to think they weren't simply bringing it with them.</p><p>Belial's smile widens as though he was privy to some secret joke. “Well, the flagellation part is hot, I'll give you that. Where do you keep your whips around here?”</p><p>Lucilius pretends not to hear him. “Evidence proves otherwise. People get sick out in the country, too. It matters not how pious they are. One by one, kings and paupers alike, they will all fall into oblivion.”</p><p>“They will when <em>you</em> treat them,” Belial notes.</p><p>Lucilius is silent for a beat. Then his mouth twists into a thin, mirthless smirk. “There is no way to advance scientific knowledge without experimentation. And there is... a correlation between fluid transmission. One I am working to isolate.”</p><p>“For the purposes of a cure...?”</p><p>Belial lets the word hang like temptation in the air between them.</p><p>Lucilius turns back to the sanctuary behind him, disappearing around the corner without another word. He will claim this place as his lodgings for as long as they deign to stay here. Two months was the longest he ever stayed his welcome, just long enough for the pestilence to run its course.</p><p>Belial grins.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“Messina, Sicily. Alghero, Sardinia. Tunis, Tunisia. Marseilles, France.”</p><p>Belial ticks his conquests off on his long fingers as they stroll side by side. No one can see him save for Lucilius, of course. Lucilius is prodding at the boards nailed to shutter the windows from the outside, trying to deduce if the occupants are still alive within their sick den. Everything is too quiet here. There is usually more noise.</p><p>“Across the Mediterranean... These are trade routes,” Lucilius extrapolates. “Port cities.”</p><p>“Correct. And what do merchant ships carry into port, besides goods?”</p><p>Belial steps casually through the wall, his incorporeal form vanishing briefly from Lucilius' line of sight. Lucilius scowls. It is too easy to forget that Belial does not have the same earthly constraints that he does.</p><p>“People and their ailments,” Lucilius mutters darkly into his mask. “Filth. Lice. Waste. Rats.”</p><p>“Ah, but rats don't spread the plague themselves. Common misconception,” Belial calls cheerfully from somewhere inside. “Rodents carry fleas, fleas carry blood, blood spreads the plague. You'll hurt Sariel's feelings if you imply their beasts are to blame for my filth.”</p><p>Belial materializes at his side again, leering in that ugly, vicious way he does when he finds something so repulsive that he is overeager to share it. Degenerate. Lucilius moves on to the next house without waiting.</p><p>“Sariel...?”</p><p>“The reaper. Rides a pale horse.”</p><p>Ah. Lucilius quietly files the name with the face.</p><p>“And the red horse...?”</p><p>“Oh, you saw Bubs, too?” Belial's grin shows too many teeth to be friendly. “War himself graced you with his presence, what an honor! I didn't peg you for the holy crusade type, but I guess you could have called on him to sow your chaos as well. Lucky me, getting my hands on you first. He'll be busy enough between England and France though.”</p><p>Lucilius makes a disinterested noise, only half-listening to Belial's inane chatter. The front door before him has been left ajar. He nudges it warily with his cane, eyes adjusting slowly to the gloom within the corridor. The dwelling appears abandoned.</p><p>“Doesn't that make you a flea,” Lucilius murmurs. He peers around the corner to find smashed crockery and upturned furniture. They've already been looted for supplies, not that there was anything worth stealing in the first place. “A pest, poisoning everything he touches.”</p><p>“So cold!” Belial clutches his chest, feigning a wound to the heart. “And you used to call me your angel!”</p><p>“That is a literal statement of fact, not a pet name-”</p><p>“You used to hold my hand, too,” Belial croons in a low tone, leaning in close to crowd Lucilius' personal space. “You summoned me to watch over you when the other orphans bullied you! You used to be so affectionate, Cil.”</p><p>“I was... young.” Lucilius shifts, lips pressed together in a tight line. A faint dusting of color rises to his pallid cheeks, hidden mercifully beneath the black mask. “And those dull girls all got what they deserved.”</p><p>“Oh, I made sure of that.” Belial's smile is sharp as a knife between the second and third ribs. “Anything for you.”</p><p>Lucilius sneers at the memory. Belial was terrible, rotten to the core, but always loyal. They emerge from the ransacked dwelling into the sunlight, faced with the empty streets of a gutted town. They might as well pocket their coin and run to the next town over, if there will be no survivors to demand their services.</p><p>Belial hooks his chin over Lucilius' narrow shoulder, hands straying close to the curve of his hips. “When the death knells kept you awake all night, who was it that shared your bed, stroked your hair, and made the bell-ringer have a little accident- yowch!”</p><p>Lucilius points his cane at Belial's bared chest, threatening to jab him again. He does not miss the fact that Belial has chosen to be struck, that he could just as easily be immaterial, bodiless. He is capricious like that. He craves any attention, good or bad, pain or pleasure. His smile, eager and twisted as the rest of him, begs for more of Lucilius' touch.</p><p>“Enough of your sentimental drivel, Belial. We're leaving. There is always more work to be done.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The tower suspended in the sky appeared to him once in his youth. The impossibly long corridor was painted in murals of creation and destruction, and built of materials from the dawn of time. Lucilius teetered on the uncomfortable brink between being too old for childhood but too young for adulthood, whilst grappling with the other realities that bled into his own, blurring the edges of what he could trust.</p><p>The stillness of millennia, broken by his footsteps. Not a single mote of dust stirred. Lucilius does not exist yet, or he has always existed, or he never will: none of this is real, and none of it matters. One moment he was doing his chores in the garden, toiling under the miserable heat of the midday sun and cursing the sisters for demanding labor of his weak body; the next moment he was somewhere else entirely.</p><p>Plague took his family, his entire town; the church took him in. Perhaps his pretty face, angelic blue eyes and delicate features better suited for a porcelain doll, were the real reason the sisters took pity on him when they had so few beds to go around. He was spared by the divine and must devote his life in gratitude, they told him when they pulled him from the wreckage. He had no control over what he saw, and no control over the trappings of the life he had been forced into. He refuses to be the mouthpiece of whatever power dragged him here. He hates it, he hates everything.</p><p>The unvented frustrations that smoldered beneath the surface finally burst in one incandescent blaze, and spilled over into molten tears. The only emotion that ever drove Lucilius to weep was his anger. Lucilius drove his fingernails into his shaking palms in humiliation, too furious at himself for losing his composure to know what else to do but hurt.</p><p>Lucilius walked on and on down the hallway, never tiring, teeth clenched and angry tears wet on his cheeks, but he never reached the end. It does not want to end, this holy connection between the inhabitants of the world and the divine. Lucilius will break it with his own hands or destroy himself in the process.</p><p>And just like that, like the answer to a prayer, he found an altar with a book of seven golden seals. Seven trumpets ring in his ears as he runs his fingers across each one. Thundering hoof beats of galloping horses overtake the beating heart in his chest. His body sings the chorus of the apocalypse.</p><p>The time for gods is over. He broke the first seal and heard Belial's mad laughter echo in his head.</p><p>His eyes opened to an inferno. He stood not in the tower or in the garden, but in the pews, and they were alight in a brilliant fire, and he was its beating heart. The very air was alive, crackling and shimmering with heat. Smoke stung his throat and choked his lungs. The light was so painfully intense that closing his eyes provided no escape, but he welcomed the pain, the most beautiful sight he has ever been graced with.</p><p>He wants to burn with it, to cast aside his flesh and transcend this pointless existence.</p><p>Gripped in a paroxysm of madness, Lucilius spun down the aisle, laughing and sobbing in equal measure. That was how they pulled him from the burning church: tears streaming freely down his soot-stained face, head tipped back, jaws parted and all his teeth bared in some garish mockery of exultation.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The one and only thing he likes about Italy is the wine. Lucilius moodily swirls the dark, bloody red in his glass. Belial deftly cuts pieces of cheese and figs and arranges them onto a silver platter that Lucilius highly suspects was once a collection plate. Even as the sun sinks below the horizon, the sultry seaside air retains its summer heat, leaving even the finest of garments uncomfortably sticky with sweat.</p><p>Lucilius sulkily accepts an offering of cheese from Belial, muttering as he does, “Sword, famine, wild beasts, and plague... When all four ride the earth, the final seals release the cataclysms, and the wrath of God descends on the sinners... Where is your horse, Belial?”</p><p>“You always look for the logic in things when there is none to give,” Belial grins, popping a fig into his smug mouth. He is amused as ever by Lucilius' moods, as temperamental as the seaside weather. “I am merely a concept given form. A belief, given a shape and a body by those who believe it. Maybe I don't need a horse to be known for riding, if you know what I mean.”</p><p>“If that is intended to be a salacious joke, it is a poor one,” Lucilius scowls.</p><p>He is in a fine temper. Not that Belial seems to care. He takes an angry swig of wine, and is then mollified by the bold heat that chases down his throat and settles in his belly. The drink loosens his tongue, makes a theologian of him.</p><p>“You imply,” Lucilius mutters in accusation, “There is no motive at all in your existence, that you were not given life as a divine punishment for humanity, nor as a wicked one born of the world's sins. That you were simply created as a by-product of human faith itself.”</p><p>Belial's eyes gleam, as rich and red as the wine. “I sow my chaos for myself, as do you. Is that our free will, or is that by a higher design? Were we always meant to be partners, or is this union our rebellion?”</p><p>“You are a means to an end,” Lucilius snaps. “Do not wax poetic about preordained fates. You appeared to me by chance, and I made the decision to use you. This is my will.”</p><p>“Or from another angle, I was born for you to use,” Belial says simply. “My purpose is you.”</p><p>Lucilius scoffs under his breath. Purposes be damned. Belial's anachronistic speech patterns perturb him at times; he is a difficult enigma to unravel, at one moment lascivious and wicked, in another, devoted in every fiber of his being. Only a fool speaks in contradictions. </p><p>“Why else do you think you've never contracted it?” Belial asks suddenly. “You've surely exposed yourself to more plague victims than most live to tell about.”</p><p>Lucilius hums absentmindedly. He holds up his empty glass in silent demand, and Belial faithfully refills it. “The nuns liked to claim it was divine providence that spared me the same plight as my parents, right up until Sister Michael and Sister Gabriel witnessed me setting that fire in the priory. They changed their tune after that.”</p><p>“Their loss,” Belial snickers. “Pity they didn't find your pyromania as much of a turn-on as I do.”</p><p>Lucilius lifts his free hand, turning it this way and that as he considers it. His skin is so pale, the delicate spiderweb of blue veins is visible pulsing beneath the surface.</p><p>“If the malady is transmitted through infected blood, then... I have theorized that the structure of my blood must contain some sort of irregularity, or agent of resistance. Perhaps it is the same aberration that left my hair without pigment, and my eyes sensitive to light. A fluke of nature.”</p><p>For what was one more error in a litany of mistakes? His construct, this earthly vessel, lacked in fortitude to match his wit. He bled for a sin he did not commit, for an act of creation he would never deign to conceive. It was the nuns who told him he was spiting the creator's designs for him in denying the form he was born with, and that no man such as himself would have a place in their sisterhood. Good. Freedom with restrictions is no freedom at all.</p><p>“You would rather accept an error than a design,” Belial comments. He takes Lucilius' smaller hand into his own, raises it reverently to his lips. “And if your anomalous and very sexy body contained the cure? If your life was spared because you alone were fated to be the savior of humanity?”</p><p>Lucilius glances down at him through a veil of eyelashes, allowing him his indulgences. “If I was the antithesis to you, avatar of pestilence, why would you allow me to live? I would undo all of your machinations, leaving you bereft of power and purpose. I could strip you to the core of your existence.”</p><p>“You already can,” Belial promises, pressing a soft kiss to the bones of Lucilius' knuckles.</p><p>Then he slips to his knees, settling easily in the space between Lucilius' slender thighs. He rests his head longingly against the warmth he finds there, gazing upward with adoration shining brighter than the stars in his eyes.</p><p>“Did you ever take an oath of chastity with the nuns?”</p><p>What a fool. Lucilius scoffs in spite of himself, but the wine answers for him. His hand slides to toy with Belial's curls, petting him like a loyal dog in his lap. Belial leans voraciously into his touch, betraying his desperation.</p><p>“Humph. You expect me to fornicate with the avatar of pestilence, and not contract some sort of venereal disease?”</p><p>“Maybe you're immune to everything I have to offer, Cil,” Belial grins, teasing the hem of his robes with an eager hand. Cooling sea breeze meets flushed skin, elicits a shiver. Fingers dance against his bare ankle, tracing promises to lay him bare on the veranda and worship him inch by inch, though never straying higher without permission. “A wise man once said, there is no way to advance scientific knowledge without experimentation.”</p><p>Lucilius laughs softly. “Ridiculous,” he mutters.</p><p>He doesn't say no.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The priory where Lucilius grew up had a small graveyard with an iron fence, forbidding and cold. He was particularly short and slight as a child, and the fence loomed well over his head, casting spindly shadows of bars that stretched across the scrubby yard and crept all the way up to the windows when the sun was at its zenith.</p><p>Lucilius stood before the graves with his head bowed as he'd been taught. It was a farce. His family's remains were never interred. Only the wealthy or the most devout got prayers and graves; the penniless were cast into ditches for dogs to scavenge. And Lucilius did not weep, for there was no sadness in death – only the inevitability that what once was, would be no longer. It was Lucilius' own hand that burned his family home in cleansing fire, leaving only ashes and bones in his wake. Rot in obscurity.</p><p>All of it, everything, was meaningless.</p><p>He was not certain he knew how to feel sadness the way mourners did, anyway. Loss felt a lot more like numbness, or coldness; the gradual loss of sensation as the chill of his endless winter leached his body heat away. He merely stood as he was told to, and waited for permission to come back inside to read scriptures.</p><p>It was in this dreary place that he saw Belial for the first time.</p><p>The shadow of wings blotted out the light behind him, but when he looked directly at the silhouette, there were no wings to be found. The strange man leered at him like a gargoyle, long limbs perched atop the tallest tombstone. His eyes burned an unnatural crimson, piercing Lucilius through.</p><p>He was not human. Lucilius shuddered in spite of his best efforts not to react.</p><p>“Now why would a little lamb like you be able to see me...? Interesting...”</p><p>Lucilius jutted his chin in defiance, refusing to be cowed, though his small hands bunched up nervously in the fabric of his long skirts. They dressed him in black. Everything here is black.</p><p>“Demon,” Lucilius exhaled.</p><p>“You wound me! A demon, cavorting on hallowed ground?” Belial retorted. “Wouldn't I be melted down like glass, or boiled in holy water, or subjected to some other nasty torture you mortals have devised?”</p><p>“Angel, then,” Lucilius amended, scrunching his nose in annoyance at being corrected. Angels could be perceived in many shapes, after all. Be not afraid.</p><p>“You have my attention, so what will you do with me?” Belial never confirmed or denied his guess, but shot him a decidedly not-angelic wink. “Are you bored with this mundane mortal existence and want to spice it up? It must be a drag for someone as clever as you, every day the same, prayers and chores and more prayers and more chores...”</p><p>“Flattering my intelligence will get you nowhere,” Lucilius interjected sharply.</p><p>“Cunning can be a curse, can't it,” Belial continued, undeterred. His sultry voice dripped with honey, rich and overly sweet, laden with temptation. “You're sharp enough to know if you leave the safety of this cage, you'll never survive. This backwards world isn't ready for the likes of your genius... or your body.”</p><p>“...Tell me, angel. What do you know of the creator's design? What manner of god would slaughter the entire flock, but leave one lamb behind to deal with the aftermath?”</p><p>“Ah, and you just can't resist forbidden knowledge, what a combo! You question authority so easily while standing on holy ground,” Belial remarked, amusement glittering in the depths of his preternatural gaze. “Are you certain this is the path you want to continue down, knowing what lies at the end of it? Even while they're all dropping like flies, your people are still happy for any excuse to kill each other.”</p><p>“There is no purpose in life,” Lucilius shrugged. “Thus, living in blissful ignorance is a far more terrible fate than dying with the bitter truth on my tongue.”</p><p>Belial clapped his hands together and rubbed them like a fly alighting on a particularly ripe carcass.</p><p>“Oookay,” the angel cheered, dropping down from his perch to sidle up to Lucilius. He sank down to one knee, clasping Lucilius' small hand and drawing it to his lips in a chaste gesture of fealty. “I like you, so I'll show you something good. But knowledge is a heavy burden. Don't say I didn't warn you.”</p><p>Lucilius barely managed a gasp before the visions came to him all in a rush. The ground rolled and quaked beneath his unsteady feet. His head lurched, and he doubled over, immediately voiding the contents of his stomach onto his shoes.</p><p>The thundering of hooves against cobblestone roared in his ears. The impression of a blinding white light, a crown, <em>Conquest</em>. Crowds of man parting in waves and falling at his feet, crumbling to salt, to ash, to dust. The great pestilence.</p><p> </p><p><em>M</em><em>agna mortalitas</em>.</p><p>
  <em>Lucilius walks his path with ruin on his breath, despair on his hands, death at his heels. It is not the pestilence but the people who drag Lucilius to his inevitable end. He is a heretic who speaks to the voices in his head, denounces the name of God, the one who summoned hellfire to immolate a church and serves as a vessel for the horsemen of the apocalypse. And they have suffered long years in his shadow, and demand retribution. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He sings triumphant for the end of the world, as the zealots strip the mask from his face and tear the robes from his back like so many black feathers, exposing the frail curves of his body to their judgment. He curses them, the irritating rabble regurgitating tired revelations, grit beneath his feet, useless dregs of this poisoned society, but he is powerless to resist their wrath, nor does he want to. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He is tired. They do not see Belial slipping his spectral fingers into the intimate hollows of their bodies, filling the soft cavities of their organs with his swelling rot, sweet putrefaction. They do not see Belial watching him, only him, trembling and smiling so terribly in his anger and his love, promising to ruin this world for him. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Belial will find him again and again, as many times as it takes. Lucilius is tired, and now it is finally, finally, his time to rest.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Lucilius jerked his trembling hand away. Belial's unsettling gaze did not leave his face. Watching. Waiting.</p><p>Lucilius hesitated, then extended his left hand again. Belial accepted it, his breath warm against Lucilius' cold fingers. He is Conquest, he is Pestilence. He is the only source of warmth in this endless winter.</p><p>He belongs to Lucilius, from now until eternity.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>